


hard to find

by jaylocked



Series: soulmate aus [1]
Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, friendship or more? choose your own adventure, i mean jean is involved of course it's angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8274473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaylocked/pseuds/jaylocked
Summary: Jean has learned to hate the letters on his ribs.He can remember a time before, back when he still had the sky above him and his future before him, when the letters fueled his insatiable, childish imagination. But then he lost the sky, lost his future, lost his language, and the letters changed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from song by the national of the same name.  
> warnings for reference to past torture and abuse (mental/physical/emotional) on par with canon? nothing graphic, but Jean is dealing with the fallout of leaving the Nest/Riko- let me know if there's anything else i should warn about

Jean has learned to hate the letters on his ribs.

He can remember a time before, back when he still had the sky above him and his future before him, when the letters fueled his insatiable, childish imagination. But then he lost the sky, lost his future, lost his language, and the letters changed.

They changed because they became the source of endless turmoil, three simple initials that had caused a world of pain and confusion and irritation. They were no longer the kindling he wanted to picture his future, a world where he’s not alone.

They say different things to him and those around him, depending on his mood, depending on the context. Sometimes they say _you will always belong to somebody else_. Sometimes they say _you are meant for more than this,_ or _you will always be disappointing somebody,_ or _somebody will always care._

Mostly, they say _you are more than Riko._ He is more than Riko, has a destiny outside of the mind numbing pain and awful abuse. But he is less than Riko now, now and until Riko lets him go, and to Riko the letters say _hurt him, because your futures are not bound together_ ; _hurt him, because he owes nothing to you_ ; _hurt him, because he_ is _nothing to you._

Initially, there are days when he still likes to picture his soulmate, the unfortunate soul with his initials burned into their own skin. Usually, they end up looking as different from Riko as Jean can imagine, a blonde girl with sparkling blue eyes and an easy smile.

But then Jean imagines meeting such a girl, letting such a girl unearth his scars and understand his past, and she shatters into fragments of the dream that she is.

Jean doesn’t just learn to hate his letters. He learns to stop dreaming, too.

* * *

It isn’t just that Jean’s letters aren’t Riko’s, though, that sparks his ire: it’s his own letters, the KAD carved into his back, referring obviously and unrequitedly to his righthand man. Riko is not gay, has never been gay, but his destiny is desperately entwined with Kevin’s, no room for anybody else in their frantic journey towards stardom, towards conquering the game and taking no prisoners along the way.

No room for anybody, of course, except the TEM on Kevin’s ankle.

Riko likes to carve that into Jean’s own ankle, the bleeding incision a laughable mockery of Kevin’s mark, a vain attempt by Riko to place himself back in the center of the story.

The night Thea’s own KAD mark is revealed, just a small thing on her heel, Jean blacks out from the pain, KAD sketched across his ankles over and over.

He carries the scars, because he has no other option, no place to put them down. Kevin can’t meet his eyes.

* * *

When he meets her, Jean thinks that Renee Walker can’t be real. She’s another figment of Jean’s forgotten imagination, a hallucination from the trauma he’s suffered. Her multicolored hair, her kind eyes, her soft smile– she’s the shattered dream, the escape from Riko that he’s been looking for since he first lost the sky.

The letters on his ribs feel like a heavy burden as they don’t match up with the girl in front of him, a reminder that of course he can’t hold onto this. They tell him that he had been foolish to think such a thing, even for a second.

* * *

The Foxes’ nurse is named Abby, and she cries when Jean is delivered to her doorstep. She tries to hide it, tries to wipe her eyes quickly and quietly, but Jean has been raised to find others’ weaknesses. He’s been raised to hide his own.

In her home, he is exposed, the last of his scars laid bare before her sweet, sad eyes. Jean slips in and out of consciousness as she tends to him, but each time, he feels paralyzed and naked before somebody who holds such kindness for a stranger.

It is that as much as the sky outside his window that convinces him that he’s alive, alive, alive, outside the Nest, free from Riko. Nothing as gentle as Abby’s fingers ghosting over his bruises and cuts could survive in the Nest.

* * *

Jean hasn’t had any time to think about what freedom will feel like. It feels suffocating and overwhelming and unearned. It feels like it could swallow him whole and nobody will notice. It feels _wrong_ and Jean never thought he’d want to go back, but he _does,_ he does, he does–

* * *

Renee Walker is not a dream. She is a force of nature that Jean hasn’t learned how to weather, not when he was deprived the sky for so long. She balances the anxiety and chaos inside of him with a soft smile and understanding eyes and unfailing strength.

He will not go back to the Nest. She helps him internalize that.

He will continue playing Exy, like Josten told him to. She helps him accept that.

He is free. She repeats it to him, quietly and loudly and slowly and all at once, when his head is too loud and his hands shake and his ribs collapse.

After all, he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

* * *

“What are your real letters?” Renee asks him one day, changing a bandage on his ankle that’s at an awkward angle for Jean to do himself. The vicious KAD and TEMs are scarred around his legs, unavoidable and unnatural.

Jean wordlessly lifts his shirt, revealing the messy letters on his ribs. Renee cocks her head as she studies them before returning to her task.

They sit in a peaceful silence, Jean watching her work somewhat apathetically. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, but it’s not a comfortable feeling. When she’s done, she looks up at him before pulling her hair aside to show a neat ERK behind her ear.

Jean feels a pang of– something at the simplicity of her action, the mutual trust between him. This, too, is something that could not last in the Nest.

* * *

When Jean steps into the airport California, his first thought is that it’s too warm. When he meets Jeremy Knox, he’s too happy. When they pull up at the stadium, it’s too bright. Everything is too much, but Renee isn’t there to ground him, so he holds tight to his racquet and tries to lose himself in the only thing he knows will never leave him.

* * *

“You know, the rest of the team won’t be here for another month,” Jeremy comments casually, leaning against the wall and watching Jean lift. Jean doesn’t waste any energy on replying to the pointless observation. After a few reps, Jeremy walks over a puts a careful hand on Jean’s shoulder. “Jean, you should do something other than work yourself to death.”

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Jean lets the bar rest on the stand. He eyes Jeremy critically and finds the other boy looking determined. He sighs. Sits up.

“Like what?”

With a bright grin, Jeremy slings an arm around Jean’s shoulders and steers him out of the gym, babbling about some of his favorite places in LA.

The weight on his shoulder is different than Renee’s soft hand in his, but somehow, it still has the same grounding effect.

* * *

He can hear a voice through the door when he gets back to the dorm from his run, so he stops to listen before coming into the apartment.

“Do you think there’s anything else I can do?” Jeremy asks, his voice muffled but obviously sad and strained. “He just seems to hate anything that’s not exercising, and like I’m super down for Exy all the time, obviously, but it doesn’t seem healthy...movies, really? Good to know. Thanks, Renee.”

Jean stays leaned up against the door as Jeremy says his goodbyes, trying to figure out what he’s feeling. How dare Jeremy call Renee behind his back to talk about him?

He swings the door open forcefully, prepared to tell his captain off, only to stop short at the sight of Jeremy sitting dejectedly on the couch, staring out the window, shoulders slumped. As the door slams shut, he straightens up and plasters on a bright grin.

“Hey Jean! How was your run?”

Jean studies Jeremy’s smile. He’s unable to detect anything off about it, despite having seen his posture moments ago. He’s perplexed, for a moment, that this shiny, happy boy can mask himself so well, that he can pretend to be something else so seamlessly.

Jean has never felt like he understood Jeremy more, even as he stifles his confusion.

* * *

In the night, it’s hard to remember the too-much, all-bright life he has now, away from West Virginia and Riko and knives and endless black and red. His nightmares had started in Abby’s house and they follow him to California.

In the Nest, he had been punished for that weakness in his early years. Riko had sneered at his sweaty awakenings, sometimes waiting by his bed to do something about that perceived flaw. He became a master of waking silently, a scream stifled in his throat, breathing evenly as his heart raced.

Old habits die hard, and he takes a weak pride that Jeremy hasn’t yet been woken up by Jean’s memories. Every night, as he blinks awake and tries to avoid memories of pain and desperation, the deep breathing across room lulls his pulse back to normal.

He knows, as the summer drags on, as his introduction to the rest of the team looms, that someday he will find comfort in the darkness and stillness of the night. Until then, he takes to counting Jeremy’s breaths in French until sleep reclaims him.

* * *

Modesty was not an option in the Nest, but it is something Jean has learned to cultivate once he was able to. Abby respected it to an almost weird degree after she had spent so much time healing his broken body, and Renee had soothingly told him it was ok to take his time adjusting to privacy.

The first time Jeremy sees the letters on his ankle, then, is an accident. Jean is getting ready for a shower after a run, pulling off his socks and shoes, when Jeremy walks into the room, humming loudly to himself.

“Sorry, man, didn’t realize you were in here!” Jeremy exclaims, too loud, too happy, too _much,_ just like he always is. His eyes rake across Jean’s legs for only a moment before he’s already out the door, Jean only barely processing everything.

Jean stares down at the scars on this ankles, the TEM and KADs an intricate, crisscrossing pattern over the veins and skin. He wonders what they look like to somebody else, what they say to somebody like Jeremy. He wonders what they mean to him.

* * *

Jeremy has just finished a long story about the first time he visited USC and somehow ended up participating in a flash dance when Jean tells him.

He wasn’t planning on saying anything, not really, not after Jeremy hadn’t said anything after Jean emerged from the shower, acting as bright and sunny as ever. Jean had caught him throwing a considering look in his direction as they waited for their drinks at the diner, but even that wasn’t that out of character.

“Riko didn’t like that I didn’t have his initials,” he blurts out with no finesse. Jeremy’s mouth closes with an almost audible click, his blue eyes focused on Jean with an intensity he usually reserves for the court. Jean looks down at the table. “He didn’t like that I had somebody who wasn’t him, so he liked to put other people on me. He put his own initials on my back over and over.”

Jean looks back up to find Jeremy’s expression unchanged, mouth in a firm line, eyes intent on Jean. This wasn’t the soft, sympathetic gaze of Renee, but Jean found himself speaking anyway.

It’s almost easier to talk with Jeremy, even though he hasn’t done it much, because Jeremy doesn’t expect Jean to say anything. Each time Jean decides to hand over a piece of his history, Jeremy accepts it with no questions, no pity, just careful consideration and acknowledgement.

“So that’s why I have Kevin and Thea on my ankles.” Jean looks back down to the table. “I thought you might be wondering.”

“I was,” Jeremy agrees. His voice has none of the sunniness he usually injects into it. It’s almost his captain voice, just a touch softer. “Thank you for telling me, Jean.”

Jean shrugs.

“Have I ever told you about how my best friend met his soulmate?” Jeremy asks, smile back in place. Jean shakes his head. He can feel his shoulders loosening with every word Jeremy says, and wonders if this is what trust feels like.

* * *

When the team gets to campus, Jean can almost feel his shields resurrecting themselves like a physical force around him. He wonders when, in the months he’s known Jeremy, they went down in the first place.

* * *

Laila and Alvarez seem determined for Jean to feel like part of the team in a way that nobody has ever done for Jean. It’s almost as nice as it is annoying.

They talk to him over breakfast and dinner. They insist on his attendance at their movie nights. They bake him brownies and cookies. They smile at him from across the room. They give him gentle shoulder checks during breaks in practice.

Slowly, gradually, Jean learns to smile rather than scowl back.

* * *

Sometimes, Jean wonders why he finds Jeremy overwhelming. Why he thinks that Jeremy’s smiles are too much, why he can’t always think right when Jeremy laughs so loudly and freely, why he watches Jeremy across the room.

He wonders what life would be like if he had never met Riko, what life would be like if he met Jeremy back when he still remembered how to dream.

* * *

Exy is Exy is Exy is Exy is the only constant that Jean can rely on, even on a new team with happy strangers who _laugh_ during practice, even with a coach who encourages instead of berates, even with a captain whose smiles are anything but cruel.

It feels good to win again.

* * *

“When did you two realize that you’re soulmates?” Jean asks Alvarez and Laila over breakfast a few months into the semester. He speaks without thinking sometimes now. Each time it happens, something in him marvels at it. He tries not to tense against a ghost’s hand.

Alvarez smiles at her girlfriend. It’s a softer expression than she usually wears, perhaps more sincere. “On our second date.”

“No pressure, right?” Laila says to Jean, wearing a matching smile.

“Hey, it actually does mean there is no pressure,” Alvarez protests. She shoves Laila with a shoulder. “We’re _perfect_ for each other, babe. There’s no getting rid of me.”

“Ugh, are they talking about soulmates again?” Jeremy groans, dropping into the seat beside Jean dramatically. He sets his tray down on the table as loudly as one possibly can. “We get it, you two are sickeningly in love.”

Jean is surprised to hear a genuine note of annoyance in Jeremy’s tone, even as the captain grins at the couple across from him. Jean thinks back to that day with the phone call, how Jeremy was able to straighten up and paste on a smile immediately.

Jean tries to imagine how Jeremy acts with nobody around to see him. Does he smile, or are his shoulders slumped under the weight of expectation?

Jean watches as Jeremy continues ribbing his teammates, looking for a crack in the facade he’s constructed. He can’t find one.

* * *

Jean wakes that night to a choked off scream, the black above him pushing down on his chest. After a disorienting moment, noises filter back in: the cars from the street, the gentle snores across the room.

He turns his head towards the window, where Jeremy’s profile is barely visible. Jeremy is a deep sleeper, that Jean knows, but never before has he wondered what it is that Jeremy dreams about. What does Jeremy think about when he can’t fall asleep? His soulmate?

Jean is startled to realize that he’s never heard Jeremy mention his soulmate before. Soulmates are a private topic, at least outside of the Nest, but it seems wrong that somebody like Jeremy isn’t boasting about their soulmate with a huge grin all the time.

He tries to picture whoever fate has designated as a match for Jeremy. He thinks of Riko’s fixation with Kevin, of Kevin and Thea’s quiet strength, of Alvarez and Laila’s genuine affection. What does it mean to have a soulmate, to have somebody destined to change your life like no other?

Jeremy’s soulmate should be somebody who can smile as bright as him, Jean decides. Somebody who can keep his shoulders from slumping. Somebody who can see through his facade.

When Jean drifts off again, he's still trying to imagine who could possibly deserve somebody like Jeremy.

* * *

He and Renee talk every week, text more often, but it takes a few months before Jean realizes that he finds comfort from Jeremy and Alvarez and Laila and his Exy racket, that he’s not _needing_ to talk to Renee anymore.

“I’m glad you’ve found people you trust,” Renee tells him when they’re Skyping one weekend. “I’m glad you have the team.”

Jean looks down and nods. “I didn’t think it would work out like this, but it’s not so bad anymore.”

* * *

_Not so bad_ isn’t the same as _good_ isn’t the same as _torture_. Jean can only barely remember when things were actually good, when he had blue waves and white sand and his own language, when he would sit and imagine any future he wanted. Jean can remember torture all too well, is reminded of it every time he gets on the court, every time he turns the lights off at night.

* * *

“Jeremy Bryce Knox, you get your ass back here!” Alvarez yells, chasing after him with a smile tugging at her lips. Jeremy sprints away, cackling. Laila is shaking her head, watching her girlfriend’s antics fondly, but Jean’s attention has narrowed to three words.

Jeremy Bryce Knox. JBK.

Jean thinks back to Jeremy’s messy scrawl. Jean thinks back to the letters permanently etched on his ribs. Jean thinks back to Jeremy’s unflinching kindness, his observant gaze and easy smile.

Jean thinks back to what it was like when he left the Nest, what it was like when he landed in California and hated everything. He thinks about how he can speak without thinking now, how he can miss a pass in practice, how he can fall back asleep after nightmares, when he never could in Abby’s house.

Jean remembers the KAD on Riko’s back and the TEM on Kevin’s ankle and learning about soulmates as a kid. _It’s who you’re meant to be with, in whatever capacity._ It could be your sister or your husband or your best friend–

Jean stares at Jeremy as he’s finally tackled by Alvarez, his laughter smothered against the ground, and smiles to himself.

He could do worse.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh i hate angst, sorry for subjecting you to that...i'd love to hear thoughts on this! haven't written jean pov much but it kills me. also...i left it ambiguous on purpose and because the ending felt right, but the sequel is jeremy pov and romantic, so if you want to keep it platonic stop here! otherwise read on~
> 
> (come hit me up on tumblr at exysexual to yell about these boys! i take prompts!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] hard to find](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8783371) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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